"Most people don't get just how long-term Facebook is thinking. Many of its product decisions cause public unrest because Facebook is planning for 3, 5 or 10 years from now, even if that means making people uncomfortable today. Users weren't ready for the news feed when it launched, now it's beloved. Frictionless sharing and Sponsored Stories could be seen as scary re-appropriations of user actions, but social ads and publishing our offline and off-site activity are where the future is headed."

"The social networking firm is now targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering, said people familiar with the matter. The company is exploring raising $10 billion in its IPO--what would be one of the largest offerings ever--in a deal that might assign Facebook a $100 billion valuation, a number greater than twice that of such stalwarts as Hewlett-Packard Co. and 3M Co."

Advice for startups: "I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here. "So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on. "Instead of that, I recommend that you do what you love because you love doing it. If that means long hours, fantastic. If that means leaving the office by 6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class, also fantastic."

Consumed 23.9m smartphones in Q3; Nokia was the largest supplier (6.8m, 28.5% share) and Samsung second (4.2m, 17.6% share). Contrast with the US, where the leaders in the 23.3m market were HTC (5.6m, 24% share) and Apple (4.8m, 20.6%).

"A store employee, Diego Aguirre, demonstrated an internal application running on iPod Touches that, for the last few weeks, has had the ability to show the in-store location of a shopper who has come to pick up a purchase. "An iPhone owner can use the free Apple Store app to shop before entering the store. When she arrives, the app's location feature alerts store workers on their iPhones, and they can find her and bring over her purchases. Sixteen customers used the app's location feature to claim gear at the Palo Alto store on Friday, Mr. Aguirre said." This is fascinating. Imagine if more stores used something like this: Dixons, Currys, Argos. It would be great.

"In his first response to a battering from stock markets -- HTC shares are down more than 30% in just nine trading days -- Chief Financial Officer Winston Yung told Reuters on Monday that HTC is not another Nokia, the Finnish mobile firm that experienced a rapid fall from market dominance as nimbler rivals overtook its stolid product line-ups. "'I don't think it's so serious,' he said, noting that even the most conservative guidance is for shipments to increase to 45m units this year, from 25m last year. "'We will focus on the product next year, better and more competitive. Other than new LTE phones for the US market, we have phones for the global market. We will launch some worldwide flagship products. We're confident in them,' said Yung."

Fascinating: "The Kindle Fire is the cloudiest of cloud tablets. To use the device is to become a user of Amazon's cloud services. Cloud storage is free and unlimited for Kindle Fire users, which means there's no reason to bother with Google's cloud services. "Google would love to get everyone buying things via Google Wallet. But with the Kindle Fire, there's no need for that, either. Amazon already has your credit card, and makes it easy to buy everything on Amazon. The Fire comes with a month of Amazon Prime, too, which should lock you in for life once you try it... "The mobile ad market is already hurting for advertisers. There are far too many companies, including Google, selling space. The Kindle Fire is likely to become yet another major entrant in this crowded market, further lowering prices and sapping Google of ad dollars." The suggestion? Lock Amazon out of Android. But that horse has bolted.